


The Chaos Margin

by Ria



Category: Women of the Otherworld - Kelley Armstrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ria/pseuds/Ria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hope Adams and Karl Marsten can't allow themselves to regret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chaos Margin

**Author's Note:**

> This was more of a challenge to write than I expected. I hope you enjoy it, koijewel!
> 
> Written for koijewel

 

 

She's been feeling weird for years, now, that's no surprise. She's always secretly been a freak. A monster with a pretty face and long curls, yeah, that's the perfect description for her. She's a demon in sheep's clothing.

Then the visions start.

Her first reaction is to ignore it and keep on going. Nothing new there--it's her motto in life. Have a weird ability that most take as morbid curiosity? Hide it as much as possible and get on with things. Absorb the hits when you can, ace your classes, and do as much extra-curricular as possible for college applications.

It's like a growing snowball. It has to crash into something eventually.

When the voices come, they don't go away. By then, it's much too late.

Square your shoulders, deep breaths, ignore it and it'll go away--

_Blood blood blood, knife, gleaming red, laughter screams, NO NO NO STOP PLEASE NO, fire everywhere, glowing red eyes, knife knife knife, screams--_

She doesn't feel the ground when she meets it.

The next thing she knows, she's in hospital, tied to the bed. Her face is bandaged because she tried to shred it with her nails so the screaming would stop in her head. She can't control what she's saying, the truth's spewing out no matter how hard she tries to stop it. It doesn't matter: nothing she says makes sense, anyway.

Later, she'll find out she was walking on a street where five rape and murders took place.

But that won't be for some time--she has to get her sanity back first.

* * *

He doesn't know he's condemned his father to death. How could he? Everyone wants to fit in.

His father doesn't make a sound when Malcolm snaps his neck. He can't. It happens too fast.

This is not Pack, he thinks. This is not my kin. He looks at his father (not moving, not moving) and realises, with a pang in his chest that he'll later decide was guilt, that his dad was right. Don't trust the Pack. They don't trust us. They'll never accept us.

He runs. There's nothing else he can do.

Later, when he's stronger and can Change properly, he'll realise he's changed. His father may have shaped him first, but it's Malcolm who's fired and cast the mould.

He doesn't become a thief out of a warped sense of justice, taking from others to make up for what was taken from him. He's not that _gauche_. It's easy, has its own rewards, and, well, he's good at it.

Later, when he's older, he'll feel regret that he never got to kill Malcolm. But the regret doesn't last long. 

* * *

Jaime's laugh is, for the first time since Hope's known her, not laced with badly hidden exhaustion. Her heels are two inches shorter. She tosses back her hair and spoons two sugars into her coffee. The cappuccino is low fat. No more TV is obviously agreeing with her, but some habits still die hard. No pun intended.

They talk about things. The weather. The acquaintances they share. The latest cases they stumbled upon. The twins (whom Hope has never met), and Jaime agrees to pass on her regards to Elena, Clay and Jeremy. 

Karl's name finally comes up and Jaime, to her credit, keeps it carefully neutral. She's pleasant to Karl, always has been, but first impressions last long and Jaime's further into the inner circle than Hope will ever be.

Hope's the girlfriend of a not-quite-a-mutt, not-quite-a-Pack-member, always-a-jewel-thief werewolf, and that puts her squarely on the margin. She's discovering she kind of likes it there. She's already a bit of an oddball in the supernatural community--why not make it a complete life package?

Karl's a member of the Pack, but his history hangs over him like an overstuffed rain cloud about to explode. Jaime's with Jeremy and, while everyone smiles and keeps up the illusion, no one believes for a second that the Pack Alpha has forgotten what Karl did.

Hope can't remember how long it took for Karl to tell her what he'd done, but she can remember when he finally did. It was Thursday, and it was raining, and she was wearing his shirt in bed. They drank coffee and he told her how he'd stood and watched Clay being beaten to a bloody pulp.

There was no regret in his voice as he spoke, no shame, only carefully cultivated emptiness. He told it for what it was: a part of his history that he didn't think about anymore.

The intensity of his emptiness, however, told Hope the truth.

"I keep my regret for other things," he said.

The look in his eyes told her something else entirely.

So Jaime avoids the fact that Karl's a jewel thief, Hope avoids pointing out Jaime's uncomfortable with it all anyway, and they drink bad coffee.

They get up when they're down to the dregs, hug, and promise to meet up again when they're both in the same city. It won't happen for months and months (they'll both reach for their phones, pause, then put it off 'for a little while longer'), but they tell themselves that it's the thought that counts.

Hope finds she likes it, being on the outside looking in. There's so much more room to move.

* * *

The first time Hope meets the twins, they turn out to like her a lot. 

They're old enough that it's decided they can come to a Council meeting and not be destructive or a distraction. So Elena and Jeremy both enter hand-in-hand with a little werewolf who stops, freezes, and assess the room with narrowed eyes.

Hope only figures out there's something different about this Council meeting when Karl steps through the door and grinds to a halt. He grunts when Hope walks straight into his back; she glares at him, her shoulders tightening from the faint chaos spike he throws off. He glares back. Stalemate.

She's never seen the twins before. She's never been in the Pack's stretch of the woods, so to speak, and Karl prefers to keep her away from Stonehaven, an unspoken decision she's happy to go along with. Karl did babysitting duties once and refuses to talk about it, so Hope was kind of expecting... well, little monsters.

They kind of are... but also blond and blonder, with big blue eyes and a wolf's stare from a child's face.

The girl (Kate, Hope remembers, Kate and Logan) walks over and studies her. Hope wonders if she's about to be eaten. Kate acknowledges Karl's low growl with a tilt of her head, then sticks out her hand. There is the usual werewolf chaos image, a little dull and muted because, whatever about Kate's attitude, she's still a kid. Hope breathes through her nose, but shakes the offered hand.

Logan, not to be outdone, rushes over, and the two argue about which of them Hope will sit beside.

Elena smiles as Hope staggers on her feet a little. "They like you," she says.

Both she and Hope pretend they can't hear Karl's dark muttering.

* * *

They waste no time in shooting down the I-will-attempt-to-be-subtle hints when they become about as subtle as a battering ram concerning their parent prospects.

What little (and let's be honest, it was minuscule to begin with) interest they have in being parents disappears entirely the first time they babysit the twins together. Apparently, the twins have enough clout of their own that Elena has no choice but to recruit Hope as the newest babysitter when they ask for her.

("Enjoy being the new it thing while it lasts," Elena whispers when Hope comes over with Karl. Later, Hope finds herself truly glad that the fads of the young are brutal and fast. Except for the fact that Kate and Logan are not like other kids their age.)

Hope tries not to think about it. Her mother is happy that she's happy, and Hope has long since given up on caring about what the rest of her family thinks. She's risen on the respectability scale a little thanks to Karl (if only they knew what his true profession was), but being married with kids, though it'd get her a lot more respect at family gatherings, isn't exactly something she wants to inflict on the rest of the world.

Besides, being the current it-aunt is about as much as she can take. At least she gets to give back the little monster werewolves at the end of the day.

* * *

It's an open secret that's something's changing in their world. New supernatural breeds, new races, new genetic twists. There's something in the air, something afoot. They're standing on the brink, looking down at change, and change is looking right back up at them.

So Karl grumps, and she bitches, and she comes on break-ins with him and drinks in the chaos. 

They'll never have kids, but that's okay. They'll never properly be in the inner circle with ease, but that's okay too. It's better to lurk at the edges, by the margins, surrounded by shadows. The dark has always been beautiful.

He'll be the not-quite-Pack-but-still-there werewolf and she'll be the half-demon girl considered freaky even by her peers, but neither of them really gives a damn anyway.

There's no room in their lives for regret.

 


End file.
